Popular lectures

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Next week is a big week for science in Israel. Tuesday is National Science Day, and Thursday is the annual Science on Tap talks in the bars and restaurants of Tel Aviv. Don’t know about National Science Day — this science writer will just point out that of all the minstries that are being fought…

With a skull and Keats, there was little choice but to write about the new online items in rhyme. So with apologies to Shakespeare, Keats and the scientists, as well as the people at SpaceIL, here are today’s grab bag of poems. As usual, follow the links. On a Lone Cranium Alas…

Science on Tap, which happened in Tel Aviv last Weds. eve, was as great a success as ever. Ariela Saba, one of our Weizmann writers, attended one of the talks. Here is her report: Right around now – in some 55 bars all around Tel Aviv and Jaffa – Weizmann Institute scientists are starting their…

Poetry is finding its way into our consciousness at the Weizmann Institute: At the recent, fourth annual Science on Tap evening, which the Institute hosts in Tel Aviv, several poets joined in the fun, reading from their work before and after the talks given by scientists in over 60 filled-to-capacity pubs and cafes around the…

We recently witnessed the disagreement over the official memorial for the 11 Israeli athletes killed at the Munich Olympics 40 years ago. Fewer remember the terrorist attack in the Lod airport a few months earlier – in May – in which 24 people lost their lives. One of those was the head of the Weizmann…

No, the woman with the microphone is not crooning lounge songs to customers. That is Prof. Deborah Fass, and she is explaining the latest structural biology research in her lab. And this is Weizmann Institute president Prof. Daniel Zajfman in an official Science on Tap 2012 T shirt giving pub goers a talk on the…

Explain to a pub full of beer drinkers exactly what it is you do in your lab. That’s the idea behind Science on Tap, which will be taking place again this year in bars, coffee shops and restaurants in the heart of Tel Aviv’s entertainment district at the end of the month. A Science on…

The actors on the stage work their magic, turning a few disparate phrases – “challenge, giving birth, infinity, chaos, visiting a new country” – into a brief but charming improvised sketch, to the delight of the audience. But the viewers, filling a large auditorium at the Weizmann Institute of Science, expect more than to be…

One Thursday evening near the end of July, people sitting outside a local ice cream parlor watched a neurobiology Ph.D. student wave his hand in front of his face in imitation of a robot learning to sense itself as separate from its surroundings. Despite the trains arriving at the station in the background and the…

The other week, while many Israelis stayed home to clean their kitchens before the upcoming Passover holiday and thousands of preteens were screaming themselves hoarse over Justin Bieber in a Tel-Aviv park, another sort of cultural event was taking place nearby. Following the success of the beer and science event in Rehovot, we took Weizmann…